Bitcoin 2013: The Lightening Room Recap Pt 2

The second half of the Lightening Room presentations kept pace with the first half's eclectic mix of presenters.

Steve Kubby presented on his work with legalizing medical marijuana and shared his company's plan to create a whole range of products that take advantage of the apparent health benefit of cannabinoids. He segwayed into Bitcoin by explaining the difficulties that legitimate dispensaries face in securing financial services and suggested Bitcoin as a potential alternative. The interesting idea that came from this discussion was to create a fully integrated supply chain operating on Bitcoin; consumers to dispensaries and dispensaries to growers and perhaps even the growers to their various suppliers as well. Importantly, Kubby and other discussants weren't advocating money laundering per se, but rather creating a way for funds to flow through the supply chain without being hamstrung by exclusion from the banking system.

Lars Birk Olesen gave a talk on seasteading, an idea that advocates creating autonomous political entities at sea to enable trial and error experimentation with governance. Dan Dascalesu was also in the room and made a few comments about Blueseed, a seasteading inspired startup.

Garrik Hileman spoke on the history of alternative currencies, why they rise, and why they fall.

Adam Levine talked about the possibilities of using a Bitcoin widget to improve monetization of content through donations. His theme was that the current system of monetizing content would be greatly improved if creators could directly access the value of their work instead of effectively being locked into systems like that employed by Youtube.

Brewster Kahle announced the Internet Archive is launching a credit union and expressed its interest in supporting the Bitcoin community.

The final presenter of the day, Dave Collins, presented an alternative implementation of Bitcoin based on GO.